Review: 'Waste - Uncovering the Global Food Scandal' by Tristram Stuart

I always read the inside cover of books first before I take a read. In the cover of ‘Waste- Uncovering the Global Food Scandal’ we learn that Tristram Stuart ‘has been a freelance writer for Indian newspapers, a project manager in Kosovo and a prominent critic of the food industry. He lives in the UK and rears pigs, chickens and bees.’

It was the last bit that did me. I said a naughty word under my breath and made an assumption, like many of us do on first impressions, that Mr Stuart was probably the type of chap with floppy hair who ate organic muesli on a morning. He would probably make frankly absurd statements about the future of farming and the food industry. I was wrong.

Organic muesli aside (he probably does, I have since met him and he is a nice bloke), there is no doubt that this book is an impressive work. More PhD thesis than airport holiday read - the notes and bibliography cover well over 100 pages themselves - the author covers the globe looking at all aspects of the food chain from farmers through processors to retailers and to us, the consumers. With constructive criticism for everyone throughout, Stuart does at least provide thoughts on ways that the food waste issue can be sorted out. “Don’t bring me problems!” a food industry manager might say, “I want solutions!” In ‘Waste’ Stuart gives a everyone a fair run for their money.  

He also is a master of illustrating the problem in handy figures, often citing work done by WRAP, the Waste Resources Action Programme in the UK. According to WRAP research, in the UK we throw away 4.1m tonnes of food every year that could have been eaten. That is ‘484 million unopened pots of yoghurt, 1.6 billion untouched apples (27 apples per person) and 2.6 billion slices of bread.’ I am sure somewhere there will be an analogy putting all of this horrendous waste in the weary context of double decker buses end to end/football fields/number of times around the world/here to the moon etc but if it is in this book I have missed it. The figures themselves are stark enough to make you sit up and think.

Read about the author here 

He certainly doesn’t hold back on his views on meat and dairy production mind, which could make some farming folk wince. He notes that ‘if we ate less meat and dairy products, there would be more food to go around’ and does a global gallop through the reality of how much meat different nations eat - from the Americans at 123kg per person per year, to the UK at 83kg, the Chinese 55kg, the Ugandans 10kg and the Indians 5kg.  Apparently the combined weight of cattle on the earth now exceeds that of humans (aha, found it!) and meat production has multiplied by two and half times since 1970. 

Reflecting on my own travels in India last year, where restaurants were tentatively putting ‘non-veg‘ options on the menu; it is clear that as Stuart points out ‘when developing-world countries get richer, their populations are inexorably adopting the meatier, milkier diet of affluent countries.’ The author’s gripe here is that the consumption patterns of the West should not be a blueprint for the East. He argues that us wasteful westerners should get our own house in order. Food waste and feeding grain to livestock are on the same page for Tristram Stuart.

Of most personal interest to me and in my work in Brussels, is the focus on the part that supermarkets play in all of this. Sparse shelves are a big turn off for consumers; they think they have missed the best and as a result the systems of big retailers and food outlets intentionally over order. This means of course that there is a lot of waste. Coupled with examples of some of the well known practices of unfair trading in the food supply chain, Stuart argues that better and more honest relations between consumers, retailers and farmers would go a long way to solving the food waste headache. I don't think there is much to argue with there.   

It's unlikely I'll ever look at the food in our fridge in the same way again, and if you read this book it is likely to have a similar effect. The central premise of the book is that the perceived future for the food and farming industry - to produce more more more quick quick quick - is incorrect, and that it would be far more advantageous to get better at eating what it is we are already producing. This is a serious book on a serious subject, and most definitely worth a read. Published in 2009 (I am relatively late to the party) some would say it came out a little before its time. Looking at current discussions at European level, the plethora of reports on food waste and the rise of food banks, it seems the time for getting on top of this issue has finally arrived. 

You can follow the progress of Tristram Stuart via his campaigning website http://www.feeding5k.org 

Nostalgia Overload: Doing Your Bit

I went home to Huddersfield for a day on Monday. A cheap Ryanair flight to Manchester, overnight at the folks' and then back to Brussels on Monday night. I primarily went to see some elderly relatives that are having a tough time and are both in hospital. I also had what I now realise was nostalgia overload.

This makes it sound like I have been living in some foreign clime for years on end and only go back to the homeland for births, marriages and funerals. This is patently ridiculous, because I actually live in Brussels which is two hours away from London on a train and is quite possibly the easiest foreign city to live in. This is not a hardship.

On Monday morning I got up and went delivering milk for an hour with a friend of mine who has done the run every day for 35 years. I delivered milk with him from aged 12, spent ages practicing shearing (badly) with his sheep and then when I passed my driving test he could stay at home and see to the farm while I took care of the milk round. And now I live in Brussels and I feel a long long way away from all that. Delivering two pints of blue top to Molly at number 10 ("watch them bloody steps, this weather is lethal") and 1 pint of red top on Woodhead Road ("round back 'a that terrace there, it goes under a bucket") brings you right back to it. 

You can waltz around with a tie on all you want, but this is where you get your hands mucky.

Then I went and had half a pork pie and a brew with Raymond and Jenny. Raymond runs the butchers shop in the village where I worked after school, washing out and learning to cut up. Raymond is pushing 65 and wants to retire. The shop has been unchanged for certainly as long as he has been there, with a traditional tiled floor, white wooden slatted walls and the block that has a dip in the middle from years of use. The horsemeat carry on has been good for business, and the shop was like Christmas Eve on Saturday in the snow. They were queuing out of the door. Stocking up, some folk think they're going to be snowed in forever. We'd run out of beef at 11.    

Then I saw the wrinklies in hospital and took Belgian chocolates. Then I had a beer in the Head of Steam with the folks and remembered that this pub (after the Rat and Ratchet where I worked first) is one of the best. Then I got on the train for a flight to Brussels, where the beer is good and the frites are better but there isn't any nostalgia at all, at least not yet anyway.

And then when I got home I saw this from the Telegraph here:

Then I realised that the day of nostalgia overload had finished off with a horrendous story that made me want to do something. I can't go and help on a farm, as much as I would like to. I can't really even buy British food when I am here either. But I can tip some spare money to farming charities who are under significant pressure in helping farmers in the best way they can. Money to a farming charity at times like this I think is really needed. So I have done my small bit, and I think it would be good if other people did the same.

The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institute is a good one and they are here.

Their sister organisation in Scotland is here.

Farm Crisis Network are no doubt taking a lot of calls and they are here.

The Addington Fund help with housing and other things and are here.

The Princes Countryside Fund opened their emergency fund and are here.

I think these charities need a hand at the minute to help farmers at a pretty miserable time for many in the countryside. Let's hope that they get it. 

It's Jam Tomorrow

Agriculture is one industry where we are always thinking about the future. 

Politicians do it all the time, looking how policy can best fit some of the challenges which are coming down the tracks. Commentators do it a lot at conferences, building confidence in their farmer audience by pointing to the world of opportunity that awaits them next year...by 2020...by 2050. The farmers, the most important people, sit and scratch their heads and wonder when things will happen today, tomorrow or next week. 

When I did an MSc at Newcastle in 2007, we did a bit of thinking about the future as well. The best bit about it was one module on 'risk' in rural areas. This largely involved sitting around drinking coffee and being pretentious and pretending that we knew everything. After we had done that bit though, we had to fast forward 10 years from that date and think about what rural areas would look like. What would be the risks? What issues would have been dealt with and how would they have changed?

We had to mock up a newspaper article and pretend that we were in 2017. I have just found it on the computer when I was looking for something else.

Of course it is ridiculous, it is meant to be to spark debate. Hopefully it is quite good fun. Take a look below (with my sincere apologies to the Guardian newspaper)

Farming and the Bank of Dave

I am a sucker for stories about chipper Northerners railing against the system, and the 'Bank of Dave' is probably one of the best. It is a true story, is a Channel 4 documentary and you can watch it yourself here. A brief summary:

• Meet Dave Fishwick, Burnley bred millionaire owner of successful minibus company.
• Sez Dave, The Banks are Bastards, they aren't lending to small businesses, Burnley is dying, there are no returns on savings and yet still banks are paying huge bonuses and we as taxpayers are bailing them out. We need a better bank. Let's do it.
• Dave sets up his own bank. They have a website here.
• Er, that's it.

Before I go on, here is Dave just so you know where we are firing:

Please note the clocks - New York and Burnley (obviously)

Of course, it isn't all plain sailing. Dave is told by everyone that it simply isn't possible, that he would need to meet with the FSA to get a banking licence (he tries, and is still waiting) and that the plan would never work. What follows is the most heart warming and life affirming documentary I have seen in a long while. Now open and operating is Burnley Savings and Loans Ltd, paying 5% interest to savers, providing small unsecured loans to local people and businesses and turning a small profit after all overheads which is donated to local charities. I could bang on further, but just watch it. 

What though, has this got to do with farming? This idea, I think, has got everything to do with farming.

Attracting young people, or shall we say 'new entrants' instead, seems to be the perennial problem in agriculture. Far too many column inches have been filled with this topic, including a fair amount of musing from me. I think it is all getting a bit boring. The problem is not a lack of people who are interested, it is a lack of opportunity.

Aside from the problem of actually getting a new entrant onto their own farm is surely access to capital. Not access to capital to buy a farm, land, or big machinery but getting hold of a bit of cash when you have no money to start with, when you have no assets and when you probably have a significant student loan. You do not have any financial support in terms of single farm payments because this is connected to land ownership and that's the problem, you do not own any land but really really want to. The only thing you do have is a hard working attitude and bucket-loads of enthusiasm. Where does a new entrant go? I think he should go to the Bank of Dave, or even better, something very similar set up by farmers, for farmers to help guarantee the future of the industry in the UK.

It would work like this. Established farmers who have assets and cash (because come on, there is money around it just isn't always easily accessible) would invest in a fund set up and managed by a group of forward thinking farmers. This would pay a reasonable amount of interest, perhaps 5%, and would then loan out this money to new entrants. There would be no age limit on applicants (who says a new entrant has to be young?) but they would have to have a business plan like any other application for borrowing money. They would be visited by a successful farmer who would talk about their idea, share some of their experience and make a decision on that basis. The new entrant could get a loan for anything that helped them on their way, or took their business to the next level. Any profits in the bank after operating costs would be given to farming charities. Paperwork would be kept to a minimum, the focus would be on the relationship between the investors and the borrowers and it would be run by farmers, for farmers without any unnecessary interference.  

In terms of financing it, it should be seen as a good business deal anyway, but it could be advertised on the basis that (ooof, controversial) farmers have started to tip up 1% of their single farm payments to invest (there is a return remember) in the future of the industry. Back-of-fag-packet figures would show that with a very rough single farm payment income of £3.3bn per year into the UK, a 1% slush fund set up by farmers (by them alone, not mandatory, not by government, just on a voluntary basis) would start off with £33m to lend out if everyone got on board. Would a farmer receiving £10k in SFP invest £100? Could a farmer who receives £1m in SFP be prepared to invest £10k?

A runner? Or shall I get back off my soapbox? Maybe it's something to float here.

Farming on a Friday

'In the early evening light a farmer walks in furrows of soil after a day
of planting potatoes on his land at Strbe in north-eastern Slovakia

The Result

Dear Madam, Sir,

Thank you for your interest in our school

Your level is A1
To enquire about courses availability for your level, please contact our front desk at 02 788 21 60 or email us info@alliancefr.be



In my opinion, A1 means the DB's, the top drawer, the best. In Alliance Francais' opinion I think this is the lowest of the low.

Oh well...

 

Franglais

When attempting to speak in a foreign tongue, I am firmly of the Englishman Abroad School of Language. This involves performing rather elaborate arm movements, actually speaking in English but pronouncing every word with a funny accent and generally failing to break down the stereotype that precedes the view of the English in Continental Europe: Part of it, but not exactly on the same page as everyone else.  

That's me on the right

We British by and large have an embarrassingly lax approach to foreign language acquisition. I don't remember French or German classes at school really being taken seriously by many, even though Madame Sumner did her very best in our typical West Yorkshire rough-but-okay-if-you-worked hard Comprehensive. So by some fluke, I passed a GCSE with a B like lots of others. I know what a croissant is, I know that Orangina is a funny foreign version of Fanta and that I live in Huddersfield, a large industrial town in the North of England (J'habite Huddersfield, une grand ville industrielle dans le Nord de L'Angleterre). And really, that's almost just about it.

Nope, I have no idea who he is either

It is no excuse to not have knowledge of another language just because English is a global language, so I am planning to try and rectify that. Now I am working in Brussels, and while most people I come into contact with speak a poetic and well pronounced English, it is useful to be able to speak French as well. I have enrolled for French classes.

Before I can go on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after work however, I have to do a short test online to see which set they need to put me in. I approached the test with a bounce, remembering my foray into learning French a couple of weeks ago via a CD from Michel Thomas. Michel says (read this in a very french accent) 'The French language is easy, it is using the very same words as in English.' Well bravo Monsieur, c'est tres simple,' I thought, 'let's go!'

IT WAS ROCK HARD. Even thinking about what Mrs Sumner used to say and that big textbook with all the exercises in and remembering eating croissants and drinking orangina for a 'French Breakfast' lesson didn't help. I had to do 3 pages of a multiple choice test and then came across the stinker on the final page:

Written composition

You have just moved to a new city. You are writing an e-mail message to a friend. You tell them about 1) your arrival, 2) your first day and 3) your plans for the coming weekend. (approximately 10 verbs, minimum 75 words)

As you can see from this blog post, I can waffle on for as long as you like in English. I am a prize waffler. Trying to spin out 75 words of broken Schoolboy French into something vaguely coherent just about beat me. I promised myself that I wouldn't use a translation service on the internet, because that really is cheating. But I did use it to translate what I had written back into English. Here it is:

Hello Robert, are you? It happened Monday in Brussels and start my work in the Office de'Agriculture British Tuesday. My apartment is very beautiful and comfortable. In the weekend, my father arrived Friday evening, we visit the town square. We visit a small town called Ghent, Saturday and my father depart for Yorkshire in England at seven o'clock. For communication, I live in apartment 108, 65a Abbey Street, Brussels. Goodbye, Adam

I have some way to go, non?